Second Contact
by Tetsuwan Penguin
Summary: Ellie Arroways cousin Eliot discovers an exo-planet with intelligent life. This story is a prequel and a sequel to the book and the movie (has plot and setting elements from both).
1. Introduction

**Second Contact**

 _Introduction_

 **Carl Sagon** wrote only one science fiction novel, his other works were non-fiction and essays on subjects related to Astronomy. I've had an idea for a story along similar lines for some time but I could never work out a decent setting, cast of characters, or a good enough outline of just where I wanted to go with the plot. All I had was this idea for the 'Eureka' moment when the great discovery is made.

After reading 'Contact', and quite some time later seeing the movie which was closely based on it, I slowly got the idea that my story nugget could be written as a sort of prequel and sequel to Carl's. The book and the movie take place in different time settings, the former begins around the time of the Vietnam war, and the movie pulls in contemporary settings during the Clinton years (The president was actually 'photo shopped' into the movie, against his wishes.) I didn't see the need to pay strict attention to an actual place in time, this is a loosely based on elements of both the movie and the book in many regards. If you see continuity errors with the original story, keep your discoveries to yourself! This work is intended to stand on its own, though it does bootstrap itself using characters, places, and events from 'Contact'. So it is a "fan fiction" in that light.

This novel was originally written as a NaNoWrimo (National November Novel writing month) project. It was my very first effort for this contest, and originally I wasn't very happy with the experience. Writing a 50,000 plus word story in a mere thirty days time is a real rush job, especially if you only have a few hours every few nights, and maybe several more over the weekends to do it. With no time to do any needed research, you only have the knowledge in your head to base facts on. Of course Google does help, but ….

I left the manuscript alone for a few years with no thought of posting it anywhere, but I recently decided to re-read it again. I had remembered that I'd made use of SpaceX in the plot, and with the recent launch of the Falcon Heavy with Elon's Tesla roadster as payload, I had to dig it up.

I actually couldn't believe that I wrote this. For a rush job, it was fairly well constructed. There are a few plot elements that never did get fully fleshed out, with one major one simply being abandoned without further development. Still, other than my usual spelling, grammar, and word choice errors, it actually seemed to hold up well, far from the disaster that I had feared when I abandoned it.

I've edited the work, and rewritten parts of it to bring a few things up to date, mostly to reflect recent developments at SpaceX, as their rockets played a part in this story. I've decided that I will post this up to Fan Fiction, though the effort will take some time. The working title remains as "Second Contact" for now, but I have a strong feeling that it will be renamed sometime before the final chapter is uploaded here. I also expect I'll rewrite a few chapters, or expand some of them. So consider this a work in progress.


	2. PART I - Chapter 1

**PART ONE**

 _Chapter 1_

 **The Arroway family** sat down to dinner at their favorite restaurant near the downtown area of San Francisco. Carl and Mindy Arroway, and their son Eliot came here often, the eatery wasn't far from a city park. This particular section of the city was typical of what someone anywhere in the country would conjure up in their mind at the mention of San Francisco, from cable cars, to streets on steep hills, and the breeze coming in from the bay. Not far from the BART, the area was easily accessible from anywhere. The Arroways, had in fact, made the trek via the subway system, though it had been a fair distance walk from the train station to the restaurant. Not a bad thing, as it gave them the opportunity to walk off their meal should they stuff themselves, which they usually did.

During dinner Carl daydreamed a bit. He thought of his late brother and wondered why Eliot resembled him a bit more than he did his father. Just a cruel quick of genetics he supposed. His sister-in-law was now raising a very bright teenage girl, with a passion for science. Eliot was named for the same relative that his niece Ellie had been named for, his own grandmother Elizabeth. It was a shame that they lived a half a country away and rarely saw each other. Maybe some day.

After diner, they enjoyed the pleasant walk back to the BART station. By the time they left the bistro, the twilight sky had darkened into night, and the stars had emerged. Near the horizon, Eliot could see the thinest sliver of a crescent moon along with the dim outline of the Earthshine lit surface of the remainder of the planet's natural satellite. The street they were walking on slanted downhill toward the nearby park. A crowd had formed ahead on the sidewalk a block away, right in front of the park. From their elevated position above the crowd below and ahead of them, they had a clear view of gathering. Two large telescopes had been set up, and there was a queue of people standing near each of them waiting to get a peek though the eyepieces. The instruments were pointed at the heavens, guided by two elderly men.

Twelve year old Eliot suddenly broke free from his mothers grip and started running ahead of his parents. He obviously wanted to look trough the large instruments and see the craters of the moon, the rings of Saturn, or whatever it was that the telescopes were pointed at. His father held on to his wife's hand and started walking a bit faster. "Maybe we should catch up with our son." he suggested. Mindy nodded and increased her pace a bit to match. By the time Carl and Mindy reached the gathering in the front of the park entrance, Eliot was nearing the front of the line for the larger of the two telescopes. The man in charge of the instrument, though clearly of advancing years, appeared to be in good physical shape. He was a tall fellow, over six feet at least, dressed in simple clothes. His appearance suggested that of a modern day monk to Carl.

In fact, that was exactly the truth. John Dobson, the trustee of the large instrument actually was a monk living at the Vedanta Society monastery. Most evenings he, and a few of his fellow astronomer friends would set up their home made telescopes at various locations in the city for their fellow citizens education and entertainment. They called themselves the 'sidewalk astronomers'. The telescopes themselves were made of discarded construction materials; sonotube concrete forms, plywood, and scrap glass. They ground their own mirrors from salvaged port hole glass. They had even constructed their own vacuum chamber to deposit vaporized aluminum onto the completed mirror, transforming them into precession optics. The telescopes were of a unique portable design created by Dobson himself. The creation process of those instruments were however, more of a case of necessity being the mother of invention, rather than a stroke of genius.

Eliot finally reached the front of the line. He stood in front of a very tall ladder, reaching up at least five feet to reach the eyepiece position of the cannon like device. Carl and Mindy caught up with their child just as John Dobson helped the boy climb up the ladder.

"Is this your son?" the elderly monk asked, introducing himself and his group. "I'm John Dobson, and we are the sidewalk astronomers society." Mindy looked up with some trepidation at Eliot on the high platform peering into the eyepiece. Eliot squealed with delight as he adjusted the instruments focus with some instructions from the silver haired monk.  
"Wow!, I can see the rings around Saturn!" He cried. "Can I look at Mars too?"

Dobson smiled up at the boy. "So you'd like to see Mars? Well I think I can find it for you."

"Yeah!" Eliot cried back.

Dobson pushed the telescope over to a different part of the sky. He sighted along the long body of the instrument, carefully nudging it bit by bit to point toward a dim red point of light in the sky. He climbed up the ladder, and stood a few steps below the boy. Dobson then replaced the eyepiece with one of lower power and looking through the telescope he nudged the instrument slightly to bring the target into the field of view. Finally he replaced the ocular with the high powered one and refocused it.

"There, take a look now," he told Eliot.

Eliot again took his place at the eyepiece. The boy readjusted the focus for his own vision and stared into deep space. He quickly figured out how to nudge the telescope to keep Mars centered in his field of view as the Earth rotated it the other way.

"Where are the canals?" he asked.

Both Dobson and his father laughed at his remark.

"You've been reading too much Bradbury I fear." the monk laughed. "Once telescopes had improved the old ideas of Mars were quickly disproved. There are no canals, they were figments of the imagination inspired by imperfect optics. Now if you look carefully, you should see the polar ice caps on the planet."

"Yes, I can see one of them." Eliot cried out.

Finally the boy climbed down the ladder. He got a good look at the construction of the telescope by walking around it and taking in all of the details.  
"Can I build something like this for myself?" he asked.

"Yes, I don't see why you couldn't. The mirror is the tricky part. We grind ours from scrap glass, the one in this telescope used to be part of an old ship's port hole. Almost any good disk of thick glass will make a suitable mirror. There are many scientific optical companies that will sell you a kit of all the materials you will need to do the job." Dobson said.

While John Dobson went on to describe to the boy exactly how the Newtonian telescope worked, Carl and Mindy both took turns looking through the huge instrument. Both of the boy's parents marveled at the view the home made optics provided.  
"Mr. Dobson is quite a craftsman." Carl told his wife.

Finally, the family left the crowd and headed toward the BART station. All the way home, all that Eliot could think of was building his own telescope. Eliot wanted to build an instrument as large as the one he had just looked though, but John Dobson told him to start small first.  
"If you want to make a large instrument such as the one you just looked through you first need to acquire the skills necessary to build your own fine optics. The only way to do that is to start small. First cut your eyeteeth on an eight inch mirror, then make a ten, and then a twelve. After that, the sky's the limit." he explained.

Eliot stopped in front of a news stand in front of the BART station and looked at the assortment of magazines lining the racks. He reached up and pulled down a copy of 'Sky and Telescope' and handed it to his dad. "Buy this for me!" he demanded.

Carl quickly thumbed through the publication, and then handed the vendor a five dollar bill, and received some change. He handed the magazine to his son. Eliot read the booklet several times during the train ride home. He noticed quite a few ads in the back for dealers in optical goods, including several for mirror making kits. The dye had been cast, he was going to build himself a telescope.

* * *

 **Eliot** checked the mail every day for nearly a week. Finally the catalog from the Edmond Scientific company arrived. He quickly dog eared the pamphlet searching for the supplies and books that he would need. The boy bugged his father for an advance on his allowance; but Carl decided that this might be a good father and son bonding project as well, so he was more than happy to make it an early birthday present. They ordered several different books on telescope making, including "How to make a Telescope" by Texereau. They also purchased an eight inch mirror grinding kit, a Foucault tester kit, and an assortment of eyepieces. That latter were bought on some faith, assuming that they would actually be able to successfully be able to grind and polish a usable mirror.

Night after night, Eliot pushed the glass disks to grind the surface of the mirror. He would complete a grinding operation using one grade of abrasive before moving on to the next. They tested the resulting focal length during the day by projecting the sun's image with the wet mirror onto the wall of the house, and measured the distance with a long stick. Soon they had the exact focal length they had planed on, and then Eliot worked the mirrors surface smoother and smoother with the finer grades of abrasive powder. Then it became time to polish the raw glass using a tool covered with optical grade pitch, and the rouge polishing agent.

Carl Arroway discovered that the sidewalk astronomers sometimes would list the location of a planed viewing site in the newspaper ad a few days in advance. So one evening he took his son back to where the amateur asronomers were gathering with their instruments. John Dobson was there, doing his favorite thing, sharing the heavens. Between guiding guests to the telescopes, he allowed Eliot to pick his brains. The boy had a ton of questions on how to finish his mirror. Finally Dobson pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and quickly wrote on it.

"When you think you've polished your mirror good enough, and have tried to test it, pack it up carefully and bring it to me." Dobson told him. "Here is the address of the monastery where I live. I'll evaluate the mirror for you and let you know how good a job you've done. When you have it good enough, we will put it in the vacuum chamber and aluminumize it for you."

For the next few weeks Eliot worked on the project. Sometimes his dad helped him, but the boy had enough enthusiasm of his own to keep up the work by himself. He learned how to use the Focault knife edge test to see the imperfections of the mirrors surface. Slowly he smoothed out the rough spots and brought the glass to a parabolic shape. Finally he thought he was ready.

* * *

 **John Dobson** measured the focal length of Eliot's mirror. He adjusted the length of one of his smaller telescopes to match, and replaced its mirror with Eliot's.

"Your mirror is only a small percentage as reflective as one with an aluminum covering, but it will still give us a star image." Dobson told the boy. He pointed the telescope at a bright star and focused the eyepiece. Slowly he pulled the eyepiece in and out of focus, looking carefully at the image on both sides of the focus point.

"What I'm doing is called a star test. It is the way that very early mirror makers evaluated their work before we had actual ways to measure the results. I still like doing this test because it can tell me exactly how well a mirror will work." the monk said. "By the way, your mirror is very good for a first effort. Better than the first one I made in fact"

Eliot smiled. "Now what?" he asked.

Dobson pulled the mirror out of the telescope and carefully wrapped it up in the clean paper that the boy had packaged it in. He put the wrapped mirror back into the heavy cardboard box and handed it to Eliot. "Come back to the monastery next weekend and I'll turn this into a real mirror with a coating of aluminum." he said. Then you can start building your first telescope.

* * *

 **The vacuum chamber** was located in the basement of the monastery. Eliot watched as John Dobson wiped the mirror clean with an acid solution. Dobson placed the mirror into the vacuum chamber, which was actually a large bell jar that was lowered onto the mirror as it sat on a small wire stand. In the top of the chamber were heating coils wrapped with pure aluminum foil. There were also high voltage discharge electrodes that would ionize the rarefied gas left in the chamber after the pumps had done most of their work. The high voltage discharge also helped to clean off the last of any impurities left on the surface of the glass. Then the gray haired monk operated the machinery. Eliot watched as the heating elements were turned on and the vacuum pumps finished their work. Slowly, the air was allowed to return to the chamber. After many more minutes the bell jar was raised off of the work surface and the mirror again appeared to view. It was now covered with a beautiful reflective surface. Dobson wrapped the mirror in several layers of clean optical paper.

"I know you will want to look at your new mirror, but leave it in this paper for a week to allow the aluminum to harden." he said. "If you don't, you will scratch it badly. Start collecting the parts for building your telescope so when the mirror has cured you will be ready."

John Dobson handed Eliot a booklet printed with a copy machine.

"Here are our instructions on how to build a sidewalk telescope like the ones we use. This is the simplest way to make your first telescope. Once you learn your way around the heavens you can build a more complex mount with a clock drive and setting circles, if that's what you really want. We don't bother with that because our simple scopes work well enough for our purposes. Of course, we don't put cameras or other instruments on them either."

* * *

 **A few weeks later** Eliot's new telescope saw it's first light. The boy sighted at the bright star along the body of the scope. He then took his place at the eyepiece and focused it. Carefully nudging the instrument the object he had targeted came into view. It was the first view of Jupiter he would see though an instrument of his own creation. He had started on his way to becoming an astronomer, like his cousin Ellie.


	3. Chapter 2

_Chapter 2_

 **A few years later,** just before he started high school, Eliot spent a summer with his cousin Ellie on the other side of the country. She was four years older than him, and about to start college at Harvard. Ellie already knew she wanted to be an astronomer, and the two of them spent almost every night out under the stars. By this time, Eliot had ground and polished several more mirrors. Following Dobson's suggestions, he had built a ten inch Dobsonian, along the same lines as his first eight inch scope. A year later, he owned a 12 inch scope which required a ladder to reach the eyepiece when it was pointed straight up. His most recent project had been a 16 inch monster. On this trip from home, he left the large glass at home and only brought along the baby eight. The two cousins knew their way around the night sky, and took turns pointing the altazimuth mounted instrument at different star clusters and nebule. Ellie was more of the scientist than an optician, but she could appreciate her cousins work by the beauty she saw though it.

One night the two of them were sharing the view of the heavens under a clear sky, taking turns at the eyepiece of Eliot's original eight inch telescope.

"One of these days I hope to work at Palomar, or Wilson." Eliot told his cousin. I feel like George Ellery Hale sometimes" he said "because every time I've built a larger telescope, I've seen more, and then wanted to see even more, so I'd build yet a larger telescope."

"Yes, I've heard his story." Ellie said. "Right now, I think I might go into radio astronomy. There is so much that just can't be done in the optical wavelengths."

The two of them swapped stories about the research they both wanted to do. It almost seemed like their destinies were aligned.

"Why did you pick Harvard over M.I.T.?" Eliot asked. "M.I.T. would have been my first choice in a heartbeat.

Ellie smiled at her cousin. "Maybe that's the reason. They're both very good schools, with equally famous reputations. Harvard is a more diverse university though. Sure, it's a little publicized fact that M.I.T. offers majors in English, Business, and the Humanities; but Harvard is well known for that. It's their Engineering and Sciences that seem to take second fiddle to their rivals on the other side of the Charles, but Harvard is top notch there too. I just thought I'd be able to get a more well rounded education there. If by some weird chance I loose interest in a career in Astronomy, switching majors in midstream at Harvard would be like duck soup."

"Gee, I wouldn't have thought of that." Eliot admitted. I guess I have some serious thinking to do before I select a college."

"Well, maybe you should concentrate on finishing High School first, you know!" his cousin teased.

"Yeah, I guess that would be a good idea, especially since I'm starting first my High School classes in about a month." Eliot said, while looking at the ground.

As they gazed skyward, a meteor streaked across the sky leaving a bright trail as a shooting star. It skipped along the top of the Earth's atmosphere, heating up as it went. The rocky visitor was going too fast to be caught by the Earth; and instead of falling to the planet's surface or entering orbit as a new tiny moon, it shot on back into space, perhaps to return again years later. It was followed a few minutes later by a few others, all part of the same meteor shower.

"Did you ever wonder if there are inhabited planets around other stars, or if there might be life in other parts of our own solar system?" Eliot asked.

"Sure, all the time." Ellie replied. "I've wondered if life ever took hold on Venus or Mars in the very early days of the solar system. Perhaps long before the Earth developed life, Mars cooled down first due to its smaller size and greater distance from the sun, and briefly developed life. Maybe, something from that planet got knocked off and landed here on Earth. Perhaps, life on Earth started elsewhere."

"Wow, that's really deep thinking." Eliot sighed. "Scary too."

Ellie looked up at the sky and spotted the 'summer triangle' She swung the scope to point in that direction and aimed it by sighting along its tube. Ellie removed a wide angle Erfle ocular from Eliot's bag and popped it into the focusing tube. She adjusted the view and smiled.

"What are you looking at?" Eliot asked.

"Vega." she said. "Vega is really easy to spot with the naked eye at apparent magnitude .03. The backdrop of dimmer stars still stand out in a good eyepiece. Hey, this is a really nice 45mm Erfle you got here."

"Yeah, that was a special I found mail order from a Jaegers ad in Sky and Telescope. War surplus optics that they repackaged into a standard telescope mount. It's about the longest eyepiece I can use on this scope, unless I want to replace the focuser with a 2" job. Not worth the cost for this old war horse though. I've got one on my 16" scope back home." Eliot bragged.

Eventually a sliver of moon rose over the eastern horizon. "Gosh, I didn't realize how late it was. We've spent almost the whole night out here." Ellie sighed. "Guess we should turn in and get a little sleep, or we'll be in bed till past noon, again!"

Eliot packed up the telescope, breaking the unit down into two large pieces that they could carry back to the house. Each of them picked up half of the assembly, Eliot put the eyepiece bag into his backpack and they slowly marched back. They bid each other goodnight, while in the distance somewhere an owl hooted.

 **The summer** passed too quickly, and Eliot soon found himself in the relative drudgery of high school. He kept in touch with Ellie by letters and postcards. She told him of the all the fun she was having in college life, and of all the fascinating professors she had met. Eliot wrote back that he was enjoying mathematics and physics, and that he hated the gym class. In turn Ellie wrote that she had finally learned how to swim, it was a requirement that all students pass a test in the pool, and she had decided to get that out of the way.  
"Thank god that Harvard has an indoor pool" she wrote "It's great exercise, I think I'm going to work out in the pool as often as I can. Even in the winter."


	4. Chapter 3

_Chapter 3_

 **A year** later, Carl Arroway was offered a transfer to work out of Los Angeles for a few months. He was needed to handle a business deal that would hopefully be completed by the end of the summer. Eliot didn't know if he'd like L.A., but he was willing to spend the summer there, especially after reading all about Griffin observatory.

So it came to pass that the Arroway family spent the summer in Los Angeles. Eliot visited the observatory as often as possible, and he became well known by the staff. He would often arrive in the mid afternoon to frequent the planetarium shows, and stay till late in the evening to observe the heavens thought one of the telescopes available to the public. All too often, he corrected the narrator at the planetarium when they made the slightest mistake. Finally one day the directory of the observatory corned him.

"Hey son, what's your name?" he asked.

"Eliot Arroway. I'm from San Francisco, and my dad is working here this summer." Eliot said.

"Well, Eliot, you seem to be a bright lad, maybe better educated in astronomy than some of our own staff. We seem to have an opening for a job here in public relations. Are you interested?"

"Are you kidding?" Eliot smiled. "I'd love to!"

The part time summer job was the icing on the cake for him. He not only helped supervise the planetarium shows, but even wrote the scripts for a few new ones. They let him perform some maintenance on the telescopes, once they found out that he was an expert in optics, having built four instruments himself. The smog and light pollution over L.A. limited the usefulness of the observatory as a serious research site, but his home in San Francisco really wasn't very much better. Eliot promised himself that someday he'd work at a major observatory, or even be in charge of the construction of a new one. He really enjoyed working at Griffin, he saw the same enjoyment in the eyes of the guests that he experienced himself the first day he'd looked though a large telescope with John Dobson.

Eliot returned to L.A. during the next two summers to work at the observatory. The family had some relatives living in Pasadena, not too far from L.A. who offered to put the boy up each summer. The observatory staff were very happy to have Eliot work there, and he was given more responsibility each summer. While not a true research position, he did try to perform some research late at night using the telescopes and photographic equipment. He even managed to co-discover a new minor comet, and a few near Earth asteroids during his employment.

* * *

 **Eliot Arroway** graduated from High School with a GPA of over 5.0. He had taken some college level courses when available, and several optional exams for credit. He was offered the position of valedictorian, but declined because he was fearful of public speaking. His parents tried to change his mind, and his cousin Ellie, who was second in line for the role in her graduation from Harvard also tried to talk him into changing his mind.

"Look, I know it's a great honor, but I'm just happy to have it offered to me. Anyway, the runner up is a very close friend, and she deserved it as much as I did. She also happens to have been on the debating club, so she will do a much better job than I could." Eliot explained to everyone.

"You're just sweet on this person, aren't you?" Ellie told him over the phone.

"No, we're just good friends." Eliot insisted.

In the end, they compromised with Eliot being asked to come up to the podium to say a few words. Carl Arroway was glad his son would have to get up on stage.

"Someday, you are going to have to deliver a speech in front of a group of people. Perhaps you will be trying to sell them something, or deliver a proposal to get funds for a research project. Even just a job interview, you need the confidence to speak up in public." He told his son. Not too far in the future, Eliot would discover that his father was quite correct, indeed.

* * *

 **During his senior year** , Eliot had been faced with the choice of which college he would attend. Three years earlier, when he first started High School, he would have assumed he would apply to M.I.T. After talking to Ellie, he had added Harvard to his short list. Three summers in L.A. working at the Griffin observatory changed his mind again. He wanted to be near L.A., so he applied to CalTech, and was accepted there. He had also been accepted to both Harvard and M.I.T., having applied to those schools just to make himself and Ellie happy. He wanted to prove that he could get into any school he wanted to. Walking the halls where George Ellery Hale himself had been, made his application to CalTech all the more rewarding. Even better, he was accepted for a work-study program with the Griffin observatory.

Eliot then discovered that his first cousin Ellie, had been accepted at CalTech for her graduate work in radio astronomy. She would be working with David Drumlin, who was doing research in the field. Eliot hoped he would bump into his cousin on occasion, they had enjoyed each others intellectual company several summers ago.

L.A. has a very good public transportation system and it was frowned upon for freshman to have their own cars on campus, so he made do when it came to commuting between Pasadena and L.A. to work at the observatory. Then one day he met a very attractive Asian sophomore physics major, who also commuted on a regular basis between the two cities, and had her own automobile. Yuki Nagasaki had dark brown hair, and hypnotic brown eyes. She offered to share rides with Eliot in exchange for his share of the gas. The two of them became friends in an instant, and tried to see as much of each other as they could. Since she was a year ahead of him, Yuki gave Eliot advice on all of the professors whose classes she had attended, and warned him of their quirks. It gave Eliot a leg up on his classmates, as he was always prepared for his classes.

Eliot's dorm was on campus, while Yuki had moved into a sorority house close by. Her house had a balcony setup on the roof where the members sometimes partied, though most of the time it was used a a hangout when boy friends came over for a visit. Yuki often brought Eliot by in the evening, and he ended up leaving his 8" telescope in her room. The two of them spent many early evenings together, stargazing. Yuki loved gazing through the telescope. She quickly learned how to sight along the instrument to aim it, and to gently nudge the tube to keep an object centered as the Earth's rotation took it out of the field of view.

One night she quickly found Saturn and spent nearly half an hour studying the rings.  
"I can see the gaps between the rings, and maybe a faint bit of color" Yuki told Eliot.

Eliot took over the telescope and started to re-aim it. "Here let me show you something really beautiful." He said swinging the scope around to another part of the sky. He sighted along the body of the instrument, aiming it at the middle of the constellation Orion. Sighting his target in the sword belt, he focused and smiled.

"Take a look at M42" he told Yuki.

She took her place at the eyepiece. "Wow, that's beautiful. I think I can see some colors in there." she said.

"That's the Orion Nebula." he told her. "It's a nursery of new star formation. I've never gotten tired of pointing my telescope there. You can just barely see some of the color in the 8" scope. It really comes alive in my 16" at home. Maybe after my next visit to my parent's I'll return with the bigger instrument. If I have my own car next year, I will bring it for sure."

* * *

 **Ellie Arroway** had been too involved in her studies and workload with Drumlin to find any time for her first cousin. However during her second year at CalTech, she started working under Peter Valerian, who was a much more easy going mentor than Drumlin had been. She felt much more at ease with Peter, and her entire attitude toward graduate study became much more peaceful. One day she dropped in on Eliot to find him in a study hall with Yuki.

"Hello cousin." she said, smiling at Eliot and Yuki.

Eliot immediately looked up to see Ellie.  
"So you finally found some time to visit! We've only been at the same university for over a year now!" Eliot smirked. "I'd like you to meet my best friend, Yuki Nagasaki. She's been a great help to me studying for my physics and mathematics classes. Yuki, this is my cousin Ellie."

Yuki got up to greet Ellie. "Pleased to meet you Ellie-san." she said, reverting to her Japanese manors.

The three of them spent the evening talking about technical matters. Yuki was well versed in the physics of electronics. Ellie discussed with her the problems of increasing the sensitivity of the microwave receivers used in radio astronomy, while Eliot listened with some degree of interest. What piqued Eliot's interests were increasing the resolution of optical telescopes. He wanted to find a way of imaging distant planets in orbit around other stars. Yuki understood the physics required to improve the optics and had her own theories about how the task could be accomplished. Now Ellie found herself outside of the discussion, though she was still fascinated by the ideas that were involved.

* * *

 **The next few years** went by all too quickly. Eliot saw his cousin infrequently while she worked on her thesis. He and Yuki managed to keep their grades up in their undergraduate studies. He tried to make time for stargazing, and had kept his promise about bringing the larger telescope from his parents house. Yuki had moved out of the sorority house, and she and Eliot found an apartment off campus to share. It had a large balcony on the third floor that commanded a wonderful view of the sky. The 16" telescopes was a bit awkward to use out there, but it would fit in the elevator and could be rolled outside on a moments notice. The older 8" instrument worked just fine on the balcony, and was easy to carry out though the sliding glass doors.

Eliot drew designs for larger instruments, and worked through the mathematics describing wavefronts, trying to figure out how to combine the images of multiple telescopes to synthesize the effect of a much larger one. He had read of such efforts using interferometers linking telescopes sitting on top of large mountains, but nothing for instruments located miles apart or in outer space. He decided that these daydreams would become the basis for his graduate thesis when the time came.

* * *

 **Eliot** was in attendance for Yuki Nagasaki's graduation. Now about to start his senior year, Eliot was already thinking ahead toward where he might look for work, or if he should go on for a Master's degree. He had the grades to guarantee a good shot at a scholarship, should he wish to go on with his education. Yuki had already been accepted to CalTech's graduate program, and had been approved for a grant toward her education. Eliot was happy for her, and glad that he would be able to see her during the upcoming year. Their relationship had had it's benefits in many ways. Besides an occasional bit of intimacy, they had also been good study mates, which had helped both of them. Eliot was happy that it would continue for a while longer.

" **If you're serious** about being an astronomer, maybe you should apply to a university associated with an observatory for your graduate work" Yuki suggested to Eliot. "If you stay here at CalTech you might be able to work at Palomar. My second choice would be at the University of Chicago, which is associated with Yerkes Observatory."

"It would be fantastic if I could work at Palomar. Maybe if I do a good enough job on my thesis, I might land that." Eliot said. "That way, we could be together, at least until you graduate with your masters."

"I might be here a bit longer, I'm considering going for my doctorate at the same time. The program would add a year to my studies, but it would be well worth it. That is, if I can keep my grades up." Yuki sighed.

"I'll help you study, which will help me too. Studying together has given me a head start in all of my classes, and you've been the best friend I could hope for." Eliot said leaning over toward her. They fell into an awkward embrace and briefly locked lips.


	5. Chapter 4

_Chapter 4_

 **Yuki's work** with high energy physics required some travel to research facilities outside of the Pasadena campus where particle accelerators and neutrino research centers were located. Ellie was busy completing her thesis, and she was also busy applying for work at numerous research centers around the world. Eliot was in good shape for his undergraduate degree, he would finish up his remaining class load and would graduate at the top of his class. He had applied to both CalTech and Chicago for his graduate work, as Yuki had suggested.

His cousin's interests in radio astronomy included analyzing the big bang background scatter, deep space radio imaging, and SETI. The idea of looking for proof that we are not alone by waiting to hear from an advanced civilization, seemed a bit of a long shot to Eliot. He preferred a more direct approach, looking though the heavens trying to get a glimpse of an exo-civilization's home world. That would require a multiple orders of improvement in optical telescope resolution. He knew he was talking about optics the size of worlds, or even larger. He also thought he knew how to do the magic.

With Eliot's final year of undergraduate study nearing a close, he attended Ellie's graduation. His parents came in for their niece's honor, and Eliot saw his aunt for the first time in years. Ellie took her place on the stage, she was in the top 5 percent of her graduating class. As they left the auditorium, Eliot met up with his cousin and congratulated her.

"Hey Dr. Arroway!" Eliot cried out to his cousin.

"Hi, Eliot! Sorry I've been avoiding you for the past few months, I've been a bit busy." Ellie responded.

"That's OK." Eliot returned. "I've been busy myself, and I've hardly seen Yuki either. She's been treking about visiting research facilities for her high energy physics projects. Now it's my turn to start my graduate work. I've been accepted at both CalTech and Chicago. What are you going to do with yourself now that you've got the sheepskin?"

"I'm heading to Puerto Rico, I'll be working at Arecibo. I'll be living at Ramey AFB when I'm not at the observatory." She said. "Have you made a decision where you'll be doing your graduate work.?"

"I'll be staying here. Palomar has a larger telescope than Yerkes, and I don't think I want to experience the winters near the windy city." Eliot replied.

"Yeah, good logic there." Ellie thought.

"Will you be here for my graduation in a couple of weeks?" Eliot asked.

"Sorry, I have to head out of here in a couple of days. They want me to get started out at Arecibo ASAP. I'll write. I promise. We need to keep in touch you and I." Ellie said.

* * *

 **The director of the Palomar** observatory met with Eliot Arroway a few days before his graduation ceremony. Charles Yerkes stood nearly a full foot taller than Eliot, who himself was just shy of 6 feet by a few inches. He was a thin man, with a balding head. Eliot guessed he was in his late 50's, but he wasn't sure. After introducing himself, he joked, "I don't think the directory of the Yerkes observatory is named Palomar." Eliot gave a short laugh.

"The thought never crossed my mind. Glad to meet you Dr. Yerkes." he said extending his right hand which was accepted by the director.

"How would you like a tour of our facilities?" the man asked. "I thought that you might be inspired to do some work with us over the summer before your fall term started. I've seen your transcript, and I'm very glad you decided to chose us over our good friends over in Chicago."

"It was an easy choice for several reasons." Eliot replied.

 **The ride up** Palomar mountain on highway 76 and the S-6 road was demanding due to the grade and the numerous blind curves, but it wasn't anything that a modern automobile with a competent driver couldn't handle. Eliot was driving his fathers old Jeep Cherokee which was had been given to him last year after his dad had purchased a new Range Rover. It seemed like the perfect vehicle for the job.

"Most of your time will be spent in the classroom, of course. The university has some classroom facilities up here on the mountain, but you'll be dividing your time between the campus and the observatory up here. It will all depend on the nature of your chosen research project of course." Yerkes explained to him. "You could chose to participate in an ongoing project that is already on the observatories current schedule, or propose something of your own. Do you have any ideas yet?"

"I am interested in the improvement of telescope optics, particularly the extension of interferometer designs to optical arrays hundreds to millions of miles in size." Eliot said.

"Millions of miles in size?" Dr. Yerkes gasped.

"Yes, I was dreaming of a space based interferometer the width of Earth's orbit" Eliot replied.

"I think that is a bit more advanced than we are likely to see during your graduate work here, but I admire your forward thinking" the directory replied.

"I agree." Eliot said. "But I'd like to see just what can be accomplished with available technology right now."

* * *

 **Eliot** divided his time during the summer between San Francisco with his parents, and Palomar mountain acquainting himself with the research facilities. He left his 16" telescope on top of the mountain, locked in a storage room not far from the 200" Hale telescope. His father was nearing retirement, and his parents had put the house up for sale.

"We'd like to move into a smaller place, one that requires less work." Mindy Arroway told her son. I'd like to have waited until after you graduated with your doctorate and knew where you'd be working, but your father's health isn't as good as it was."

"I'm not sure just what I'll be doing yet, or where for that matter. Why don't you two just go where ever it is that you've been dreaming of retiring too? I'll visit, where ever that turns out to be." Eliot said, giving his mother a hug.

"Your dad would like to move inland, away from the ocean. We're not sure exactly where yet, and at the rate that homes are selling in this area, we'll have time to make up our minds." She said. "At least that is what the real estate agent told us."

 **Carl Arroway** didn't live long enough to enjoy his retirement. He passed away during Eliot's first year in graduate study. He was buried back east where he had grown up, in a grave next to his brother Ted Arroway. Eliot's mother moved into an apartment in an assisted living home in the suburbs of Los Angeles. She now lived close enough for Eliot to visit her every weekend when he wasn't up on the mountain of the great observatory. Eliot also lost track of Yuki. She had gone to Europe to work with one of the new super colliders being developed for particle research. They had kept in touch by mail when they could, but both of them were now deeply involved in their own research and studies.

For the time being, Eliot had put aside his vision of linking massive telescopes together to form giant arrays. A new innovation in optics, born out of research from the military 'star wars' program was now being adapted for use by astronomers.

The military was looking for ways to shoot down incoming ICBM's before they could unleash their nuclear destruction. In the past anti-missile missile defenses had been considered, but they could not guarantee 100 percent success in destroying every incoming missile. Since even a single thermonuclear weapon could destroy most of a city, the goal of the program had to be perfection. Hitting a supersonic rock with another supersonic rock is just about what they were trying to do. How much better accuracy they could obtain if they were able to use bullets fired at the speed of light! This was exactly what a high powered laser could do. Earth based laser weapons could develop enough power to destroy an incoming weapon while it was still high enough above the Earth to guarantee 100 percent destruction of all incoming missiles, provided they could be located and tracked. Even if the enemy launched hundreds of extra 'duds' to hide the real missiles, a laser would move fast enough to get them all.

The only problem was that a high powered laser fired from Earth had to travel through the atmosphere to reach its target. The atmosphere would do the same thing to the laser beam that it does to starlight reaching Earth based telescopes, it distorts the image. A high powered laser would be defocused by its trip through the moving air mass. The secret developed by the military was a way to defocus the beam on the ground in exactly the opposite manor that the atmosphere distorted it, thus canceling out the distortion. The beam would arrive on target in perfect focus. It could be done by shooting a low powered beam skyward where it would be deflected back by the target and seen on the ground by a tracking telescope. A computer would analyze the return beam and calculate the exact amount of distortion required in the up going beam to cancel out the effect of the atmosphere. This was an active process, repeated many times a second to keep the beam in focus.

The defocusing of the beam was done with adaptive optics, segmented mirrors pushed and pulled out of shape by hundreds of servos. Only a small bit of distortion was required. Most reflecting telescopes already had their huge primary mirrors supported at many points, the pressure on these locations were adjusted to center the mirror within the telescope, and keep the optics perfectly in line. By modifying the mirror mounts so that many active supports were provided, the shape of the mirror could be constantly changed to match tiny changes in the Earth's ocean of air floating above mirror optics.

Eliot was now working on such a system to adapt the 200 inch Hale telescope. Once completed, the famous instrument would be able to out perform a telescope in space that did not have to contend with the distorting atmosphere. The Hale's reach into deep space would be extended, and its limiting resolution would be greater. The result would not accomplish what Eliot had been dreaming of, but it was something that he could make work now. The impossible would have to wait for later.

* * *

 **Out in mountains of Puerto Rico,** Ellie Arroway was setting up a listening program for SETI at the Arecibo observatory's radio telecsope. She spent her time monitoring radio noise, looking for a message buried deep in the interstellar static. Unlike many 'observers' at such facilities, Ellie actually listened to the output of the huge antennas, which confused some of her associates.

"I know the computers can analyze the signals in so many ways to convert them into graphical images. They interpret the raw data according to some program that a DSP engineer designed." Ellie explained.

"However the programs are not instantly adaptable to different kinds of input, and should we suddenly encounter a new kind of signal we have to adjust the programming. Sure we record everything, so post reception analysis is the rule of the game. But the human brain IS instantly adaptable. Just as I can learn a new language by hearing it enough times, so can I mentally form a picture from the noise patterns I hear coming out of the receiver. That's why I always have a pair of stereo headphones on my ears connected to the receiver. I'll bet you that when we DO discover the first message, I'll know it before some computer has figured it out!"

* * *

 **Eliot** divided his time between blocking out his thesis, his class load, and his work at Palomar. Besides working with the engineers on the adaptive optics for the Hale telescope, he had a small scale observing program as well. Most of that was done using the 48" Schmidt telescope, which was slightly less booked for projects than the Hale, but he earned time of both instruments. Eliot's thesis still involved the use of a large scale interferometer to increase the resolution of telescope arrays, but he was developing the theory and the mathematics involved on a smaller scale example. He would point out that the theory was scalable to the very large, but give a practicable example that his reviewers could 'sink their teeth into'. He also devoted some space in his thesis toward the uses of adaptive optics, here he had an actual working example. The Hale telescope would not be the first instrument to be so equipped, but it would be the largest one modified to date. There were many newer and much larger telescopes on the drawing boards, and in various stages of actual construction all over the world. The Hale telescope at 200 inches in diameter was no longer the worlds largest, and some of the newer giants would have adaptive optics for their first light, if it was first proven on the Hale.

* * *

 **The Very Large Array,** is a collection of linked radio telescopes located some 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico. The project had been started back in the '70s with just a few dish antennas, now it had some 27 of them. S.R. Hadden looked over the details of the site, and smiled. Also on his desk was the dossier of Ellie Arroway, that he had obtained though his contacts in industry and government. S.R. Hadden had long been fascinated by UFO lore, but he agreed with Carl Sagan that real proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life required much more concrete evidence. He had long hoped that SETI would provide the answer, and he now believed that Ms. Arroway showed the most promise to continue the search. She would need the tools, and he also believed that the VLA would be the answer. All he had to do was to connect the dots. Discovery was one thing, exploration the other. Of all the up and coming astronomers he had found in undergraduate and graduate institutions, Eliot Arroway was the one that most impressed him. His stated ideas for extending the reach of optical instruments could hold the key.

S.R. didn't know if he would live long enough to know the answers himself, but he wanted them known. He had survived several bouts with cancer, the disease being knocked into remission only to reoccur each time a few years later. The doctors didn't know how much longer they could keep it in check, but as long as the billionaire had his frequent medial exams they hoped to keep catching the cancer early enough to knock it back again. He modified his will so that his younger brother, T.S. Hadden, would inherit the bulk of his fortune, but totally under the condition that he continue the behind the scenes funding for researchers like the Arroways.


	6. Chapter 5

_Chapter 5_

 **Eliot's graduation** day was a bitter – sweet experience. Yuki Nagasaki made a brief appearance, she was passing though town to visit relatives and realized that it would be the graduation day for the CalTech graduate class. Eliot was very glad to see her as, his mother had been hospitalized and couldn't attend. He was very glad to have someone he knew watch him receive his honors.  
"I hope your mom is OK." Yuki told him.

"She's under observation after she had a fall." Eliot said. "The doctor's aren't too worried, they think they need to adjust her blood pressure med's or something. I think the ceremony will be video taped, so I can get her a copy to watch later. Not the same thing, but it will make her happy."

"So where are you off to after this?" Yuki asked.

"For the time being, I'm still going to work at Palomar. The second phase of the adaptive optics project is nearing completion, and I want to see it through. I've got feelers out at NASA, I want to work on the space telescope project because it is more closely aligned with my thesis. Building the world sized telescope is what I really want to do, but the time isn't right just yet. What about you?"

"I'm going to CERN to work with high energy stuff." Yuki told him. "My dream project was always to prove that Einstein was correct with his unified energy theories. Modern cosmologists have tip-toed around the problem with band-aids like string theory, and inventing all sorts of new particles. They may be heading in the right direction, but there is still a lot of hidden goodies in Einsteins old equations. I guess we will see about that."

They wished each other good luck and promised to keep in touch.

* * *

 **Over the next few years** Eliot Arroway jumped around between several research centers. He finally ended up at the Johns Hopkins University, where the Hubble space telescope research is coordinated. Prior to that, he worked out of NASA, both at the "Cape", and the Johnson space center.

While still in college, Eliot had been following the space telescope program from the very beginning. It had been placed into orbit after many delays, including the lengthy down time of the Space Shuttle program following the explosion of the Challenger. The first thing they had discovered was the severe spherical aberration present in the main mirror of the telescope.

Eliot could never understand the incompetence of the contractors over at Perkin-Elmer. He wished that the bid presented by Kodak for the main mirror construction would have been considered, Kodak wanted to have their crews cross test the optics from Perkin-Elmer, and visa versa. Had this been done the main mirror would have been perfect. Even so, Eliot could not understand how the hell the contractors had missed such an obvious defect. As an amateur he had built four smaller mirrors with almost perfect optical figures, had he been at NASA in those days he would have told the contractors exactly what was on his mind!

The NASA wonks had to find a solution. The method that was finally chosen was similar to what Eliot himself had worked out. He would have used corrective lenses, favoring the direct optical path for the correctors, but he quickly admitted that the corrective mirrors worked very well, and had the advantage of fitting in with future scientific sensors that were on the drawing board.

* * *

 **NASA's** directors were looking for future ideas, years after Hubble was operating as intended Placing a telescope in Earth orbit was now a proven technology, now they wanted more. As soon has he joined the program, Eliot put his idea on the table, two huge telescopes in orbit, located at the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points, to be linked by optical lasers to create a virtual telescope mirror millions of miles across. Eliot wanted the resolution to see planets in orbit around nearby stars that were suspected of harboring Earth like planets, maybe with life and civilization.

Eliot's ideas were just a bit too far advanced as NASA started to draw up plans for the James West space telescope. Much larger than Hubble, it would have to be assembled in pieces once in orbit, or be able to unfold itself to fit into existing rockets, or planned super sized mega launchers that were also on the drawing boards.

* * *

 **Funded by S.R. Hadden** , the VLA was now under the part time control of Ellie Arroway. Her project was funded out of the SETA program, the telescope time was paid for by Hadden Industries. With her crew of six engineers and scientists she spent her time listening to the radio noise, swinging the 27 dish antennas of the array to different parts of the sky. Ellie had worked out a search patten to look at the most likely places in the heavens where astronomers suspected that life supporting planets could exist. She had added a few other points to the search patten that were in-between, making it easier to swing the antennas from point to point.

* * *

 **One of the proposals** for the Hubble program was the search for planets orbiting around other stars. In theory this could be done by watching for a dimming of a star's light, caused by a planetary body passing in front of the star. The percentage of dimming would be small, just how small depending on the size of the planet, how close it was to its parent star, and the brightness of the star itself. The technique would only work if the star and planets were in an orbital plane that was aligned with the Earth. Only a small percentage of stars with planets would present themselves in the correct plane of view. Something like 1 to 10 percent of the stars with planets were so aligned. Still, if one knew this, the laws of probability would allow for the calculation of the percentage of stars with planets.

Very slowly, Hubble actually did find a few planets orbiting around close by stars. The first ones detected were probably gas giants the size of Jupiter, or larger, orbiting close to their parent suns. These were easy to detect as their orbital periods were short, and their large size made the occultation easy to notice. Soon, smaller planets further from their suns were being added to the total. The idea had caught on, and a special mission using a specially designed satellite for the purpose was proposed. Given the name Kepler, funding was approved for the mission and Eliot joined the NASA team designing its special telescope.

* * *

 **Meanwhile,** over in New Mexico, Ellie was lying down in her restored full size convertible, listening to star noise over a pair of stereo headphones over a wireless radio link connected to the VLA's main control center. A few of her fellow scientists were at work in the control room controlling the position of the array. Ellie had just directed them to make a small correction in the position of the antennas. The background noise seemed to get a bit quieter for a moment, when suddenly there was a single pulse breaking though the background. More than strong enough to get her attention, the signal's strength actually hurt her ears and she reached for the volume control on her receiver. A second later there were two quick pulses, then three, then 5, followed by 7, 11, 13, and so on. Prime numbers!

Ellie started the car's engine and raced across the landscape heading back to the control room. She flew past several of the dish antennas of the VLA while barking orders into her Motorola handy talkie. The first of a sequence of events that would rock the world and change man's thinking about his place in the universe had just occurred.

Eliot had a back seat to the events as they unfolded. Somewhat jealous of his cousin's sudden rise to fame in the scientific community, he was also pleased that the reputation of SETI had suddenly gotten a boast. Previously, any scientist that worked on projects looking for life outside of our solar system was often thought of as a kook, looking for 'little green men'. Some people even thought that SETI was dangerous, what if "they" found us first? While it is true that SETI once did send a message using the Arecibo radio telescope, it was a very brief transmission encoded with basic information about our existence, similar to the content on the gold phonograph records sent into deep space on the Voyager probes. Besides, it was pointed out, Earth had been sending radio and television signals into space for decades. There was not much more that the scientists would need to do to yell out "here we are!" Now, however the secret was out, we were NOT alone!

Eliot read the reports as over the next few months more layers of the recorded message from Vega were decoded. The re-transmission of Adolph Hitler's Olympic speech was a shocker, but eventually it was understood by most that the Vegan's were simply sending back what they had heard from us, just to let us know they could.

The discovery of the machine plans buried in yet another layer of the message's encoding would lead to a rare form of cooperation between many of the Earth's nations that rarely saw eye to eye. It would later be said that the whole thing had been planed by S.R. Hadden, who would conveniently choose to die in space aboard the Russian module of the ISS, but that would never be proven. It was also true that Hadden Industries would make a huge profit as a contractor building the machine.

Ellie Arroway was one of several scientists chosen to make the journey in the machine. Eliot had also volunteered, but in the end only one Arroway was going to be chosen, and a female had the advantage when the voting was called for. So Eliot wished his cousin good luck just before the door was sealed closed on the travel capsule and the intermeshing spheres of the machine started to rotate.

In the end almost nobody believed them. All of the recording equipment aboard the machine had seemed to faile to operate correctly, and mostly noise and static were recorded. There were some scratchy images captured, but nothing that was released to the public could be clearly understood. The handful of volunteers that made the journey reported having traveled through a wormhole tunnel, making several stops along the way, to a distant planet where they walked along the shore of a quiet beach. They each reported seeing different beings who told them mostly the same story about how this was only the first contact, and that there would be more to come. Yet, back on Earth all of the readings for the machine's operation showed that it never actually went anywhere. It did seem to vanish from view for a fraction of a second, and this was attributed to a failure of recording instrumentation, not to them actually blinking out of existence in our plane for a split second.

S.R. Hadden wasn't talking, he had died hours before the machine was fired up. However, he had transmitted the full report of his companies involvement in the whole affair to his brother T.S., who, at least for the moment, was keeping it in the strictest confidence.


	7. PART II - Chapter 6

_**PART TWO**_

 _Chapter 6_

 **The world had changed** after the message. SETI was still looking for ET, because most of the world was not fully convinced he had been found. There had been some evidence that Hadden had manufactured the message, but there was an equal amount of probable proof that it had been the real thing. A congressional investigation into the matter interviewed both Ellie and Eliot Arroway, but neither of them could shed any light on the matter. Ellie came out being as much of a victim of any possible hoax as anyone else, none of the tracking stations that had followed the signal and recorded the message could identify the source as being anything other than from out of the solar system. While Hadden DID have control of a few satellites that were in the right position to fake the signal part of the time, there was documented proof of reception when there were NO other possible sources of the signal. It simply had to be the real thing.

Astronomer's simply kept doing what they had been doing long before Ellie heard those prime numbers on 9.1 GHZ coming from VEGA. They kept looking. The Kepler satellite went into orbit and started its mission of looking for planets. The HST was also used for the same purpose. Work continued in NASA on the James West telescope to replace Hubble. Eliot continued his observing program with Hubble, he analyzed data from Kepler, and he continued to design his extended interferometer space telescope, even though funding for it had a snowball's chance in hell to be approved.

* * *

 **T.S. Hadden** was almost thirty years younger than his brother. He had been the last child born to his parents, his more famous brother had been the first. Between them had been a string of sisters, and a few stillborn children. Tiberius Sherlock Hadden had been named by a father who fancied ancient and classical literature. He hated the name, and preferred to use only his initials instead, whenever possible, just as his older brother S.R. had done.

T.S. reluctantly took the reins of Hadden Industries when he was approved by an unanimous vote of the board of directors. It had been in his brother's will that the younger Hadden should take control of the empire. T.S. also inherited all of his brother's fortune, though there were a few strings attached. S.R. had been a dreamer. He'd wanted to be a famous scientist, and he had studied at several of the most well known institutions. With degrees from CalTech, MIT, and Harvard he should have become more than a recluse billionaire. S.R. had the misfortune to have invented a process to make computers run faster, with less power. The semiconductor giants ponied up huge sums to license his patents, the computer giants signed up to use his software, and the royalties just rolled in. Hadden bought out other companies in the aerospace field and applied for government contracts. He became famous in the same way did Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Few knew or remembered his technical prowess when he died. Fewer still knew who was behind the continuing technology development of the company. Brother T.S. was just as brilliant an engineer and a dreamer as his brother. He was not the businessman however, and he quickly hired on the brightest minds he could to manage the day to day management of the money. He would make the decisions, but he'd have plenty of good advice first.

T.S. also inherited access to a considerable file of information that his brother had amassed over the years. He was shocked to find secrets going back to the 50's about UFO's, Area 51, and all sorts of secrets that the conspiracy theory buffs would drool to get their hands on. There was also a considerable file on two cousins named Arroway. His brother had had quite an interest in the research that both of them were doing, and he had put a note in Eliot's file: "Keep in touch with this one. At some point we need to get him some funding." There was also a file containing some information on the message, and another note "Keep this from the world, until the time is right."

The message that Ellie Arroway had received from Vega had been a compound, layered transmission. The Prime numbers were sent in an amplitude modulated series of pulses. Buried underneath in phase modulation was the television signal that had shocked the world. Behind that, was a digital transmission containing the details for the construction of the machine, and on hidden pages there was a dictionary, or a primer on how to read the plans.

But S.R. Hadden had uncovered yet another layer in the message, the knowledge of which he had taken to his grave. He did leave the clues to its decyphering in his will, in the form of a network address on the companies secure network. Now T.S. accessed that bit of information. It was in the form of a computer algorithm, which he very quickly converted into a Javascript program and launched it. It took a few hours to analyze the original contents of the message, but T.S. soon had the cryptic text appearing on his screen. Yet another puzzle, that he needed to unravel. S.R. had left the clues to this one as well. It was a picture encoded inside of another, actually. In the end a second set of plans appeared.

T.S. Hadden, didn't have a clue as to what they were for, it could be another machine for all he knew, though it looked like a high energy physics device. He felt a bit angry at the way the world had accused his brother of fraud over the message and the machine. While the original machine did look like a Rube Goldberg contraption designed to amaze and confuse, the new plans that he had just uncovered in the message looked more like something off the desk of Einstein or Tesla. But it would take sharper eyes than his to decipher it. He'd need someone with considerable knowledge of physics to make any sense of this one. His brother was right, he needed to wait for the right moment to let this loose.

* * *

 **Ellie Arroway** still got some time at the VLA to listen for signals. That was her idea of a vacation. Nowadays, she was employed as an instructor at Cornell University. She had an office just down the hall from where Carl Sagan used to sit. It pained her deeply to think of his passing, he had been part of the inspiration for her work. She approached her office and was surprised to find the door already unlocked. She slowly pushed it open and saw someone looking out the window at the quad below.

"Hello?" she said to announce her arrival.

Eliot Arroway turned to face his cousin. "Hello Ellie"

"Eliot! Long time no see! What brings you here?" she said happily.

"Besides wanting to see you again very much, I have a few questions I need to ask" he said "In private".

Ellie closed the door to the office and pulled an extra chair up to her desk. She motioned for her cousin to sit down. "I'm all ears"

"Well, I would like to ask you about the message, and the machine, and the trip, but first..." Eliot began.

"What do you know about T.S. Hadden?"

"Who?" Ellie began. "I DID know S.R. Hadden, though at this point so does most of the world."

"Ahh, I thought so." Eliot began. "He must be S.R.'s younger brother. I got a letter from him via Hadden Industries a week ago. I have it with me."

He handed the letter to Ellie. It was typed on an official letterhead of the company, on very expensive paper.

 _Dr. Eliot Arroway:_

 _I have become aware of your research with the Hubble telescope, and of your relationship with Ellie Arroway. Hadden Industries provided most of the funding for her SETI time on the VLA, and we backed her in getting approved for the use of that facility. As you probably aware, we were the prime contractor for the international machine consortium that built the machine from the plans in the message received from the Vegan system._

 _In light of the discovery made by Ms Arroway, and the recent progress being made by the Kepler mission, we feel that it is time that your proposals to NASA for the next step in space based optical telescopes should be taken ASAP. We do not feel that the proposed and currently being constructed James West telescopes is a bold enough approach._

 _We would like to discuss your ideas for advancing space based optical astronomy at your earliest convenience. You may contact me anytime at the phone number on my enclosed card._

 _Respectfully_

 _T.S. Hadden, CEO, Hadden Industries._

"That looks like the way that I was recruited years ago when I was looking for funding. I never contacted S.R. Hadden directly, he called me." Ellie gasped. "Just what does he know about you?"

"I don't know how he got the information. I had proposed to NASA a wild scheme that I had little hope of them approving because most of the details weren't possible at the time. I sorta hoped that someone else had the missing answers." Eliot started. "Just as the VLA can act as a huge antenna with much greater resolution than any of its parts, I wanted to do the same with optical telescopes, only on a much more ludicrous scale. The VLA is an antenna that has greater resolution than the sum of its parts."

"OK, so far I understand. Go on." Ellie said.

"Do you know what the Lagrangian points are?" Eliot asked.

"Sure, they are points along the Earth's orbit, or the Earth – moon system where gravity balances out and a satellite can remain stable with little rocket fuel used."

"Right. There are two of these, called L4 and L5 almost two AU apart on either side of the earth's orbit. The sun does not lie in the middle and you could see L4 from L5. I wanted to put two large telescopes in space, one at each of those points. They would be connected via some kind of optical link to form a huge virtual telescope millions of miles in diameter."

The implications of such an instrument immediately occurred to Ellie.

"My God!" She exclaimed. "I think I see what you are getting at. It might be possible to image the surface of another world light years away with that."

"Yes, that is what I wanted to do. You don't think Hadden wants to fund this, do you?"

"If T.S. Hadden is anything like his brother, I would not be a bit surprised if he would. It might be a way for him to clean up his name after the funk from the machine. I never believed for an instant that he faked that message." Ellie thought.

"So, I should call him?" Eliot asked.

"Yes, I would. If you do, and if he asks for you to visit the corporate head quarters, I'd like to come along with you. I think T.S. Hadden would like to see me, I'd sure like to meet him." Ellie answered.


End file.
